We met ~3,5 years (7 semesters) ago at our university during his orientation week. I will spare you the details of how exactly we met. We basically flirted for 1,5 years before one of us (let's call him Chris) was brave enough to ask for a date. My strategy was to play wordl with him. It gave us an excuse to start texting eachother everyday. I liked his humour and even when the jokes were bad somehow I found them hilarious. We had a nice understanding of eachother and talking to him always felt like a safe space. I never dated anyone before because I never believed that anyone would be romantically interested in me. I would say that I am boyish. Most of my close friends are male and I do feel more comfortable around them than around other women. I study mechanical engineering. At my university about 15% of the mechanical engineering students identify as women. I saw myself as one of the boys so I never imagined that someone would like me like that. At that time I was so excited that someone that I liked also liked me back but now I was stepping into unknown terrain. Both of us did not know what to expect since both of us had never been in this situation before. On our "dates" we would just talk like before but there was an awkwardness hanging in the air. We would adress the awkwardness, how it felt stuck and how we did not know what this new situation even meant. He was patient but..I was so scared to mess it up that I was frozen and didn't let anything happened. I was heartbroken but not surprised when after two months he said he wanted to go back to being friends like before. And that's what we did. I did not want to loose a companion like him and I settled for friends. I thought that in time I would get over him. And I think I did. We would hang out once in a while and each time I was more convinced that I had gotten over the heartbreak. A few months had passed and I met a guy (Jeff, 24M) that I knew briefly from an university event 3 years earlier. We talked and hit it off. I had gained a bit of confidence since now I knew that it was possible for people to be interested in me. I asked out Jeff. I was ready to take on this new challenge. And it was fun flirting. It was less awkward with Jeff and we progressed more like I imagined couples would. In the end it did not work out with Jeff. We dated for a year in which i was away for six months and even before I left I was unsure of how I felt about Jeff. I thought that maybe long distance made me forget him but when I got back and I was not excited to see him I decided to break up. It felt freeing. When I returned Chris had contacted me and wanted to meet up. We barely had contact when I was away. While I dated Jeff, Chris also had been seeing other people. So I thought that we had really gone back to just friends. It also had been almost 2 years since "dated". Ever since I had gotten back from being abroad Chris and I have been meeting up and texting more and more frequently. My parents are immigrants and we speak a different language at home. I had briefly mentioned before that I worry that my parents would not approve a partner that is not from our culture and does not speak our language. Chris has started studying my mother tongue recently. It is not a common language that people study like spanish or french. My delusional brain tells me it is so I would not have to worry if we were together. Well at least it was one of the first thoughts I had when Chris told me. This is when I really started to question if I had ever gotten over Chris or whether I am falling for him again. Recently we have gotten into wordl, again. We always do them at midnight after that we would text a bit and wish eachother good night. I tried to confide in my best friend but he refuses to give me any input and advises me against it without a satisfying reason, quote:" there are plenty fish". BUT I really like this fish. Am I just refusing to listen to reason? I haven't had the courage to talk to other friends about it because I fear they will also advice me against it. This tells me that somehow I also believe it would not work out. One of my theories is that I am almost done with my studies and I probably will leave the city around end of this year. My last relationship did not end bc of the long distance but it definetly did not help. I fear it's fear.😅 I dont know what to do. What if he is just glad I am back? I fear that if I confessed my new/old feelings I will loose him. I just want to know what's wrong with me. Why am I so scared? Other people seem to be able to confess their feelings so well. I would really appreciate an outside perspective on my situation. Thank you!♥️

For those of you that have bought a new bike, what was the difference in price from msrp? I just got quoted an otd price of $11,000 for the ninja 500 SE 40th anniversary edition and thought that was pretty insane. (EDIT: I'm in Austin TX btw)

My wife and are celebrating our anniversary in Spain. She's also pregnant, which makes this especially exciting.
I hope that we can find a few nice restaurants to celebrate, but these need to be places that will be able to accommodate the common pregnancy restrictions, including no undercooked meat or eggs, and cheese has to be pasteurized or cooked. Also we do not eat pork or shellfish.
Part of the problem we are finding is that many restaurants do not post their menus online.
I realized it might be difficult if we stick to Spanish food (though I'd love a few Spanish options if possible), so we're also open to anything else - grilled fish, grilled chicken, Italian, Indian, etc... thank you.
PS - we will be in Sevilla for our actual anniversary, so I'd love to have a good option there at least.
Thanks for the help.

This is partly me having a place to tell my story, and partly me begging for a higher power to tell me what to do.
I met my wife the day high school ended. We were together 4 years, had a son, got married the next year, and we just had our 10th anniversary (of meeting - the only one we celebrate). We're now both 28. Our son is 5.
--- I was afraid of commitment the first 2 years --- I found myself flirting with other people on a handful of occasions that almost ended the relationship then. I admit to emotional infidelity. I had a few crushes here and there. It was dumb, but I never allowed these relationships to be physical, and I will take this to my grave maybe being the only person who believes me. The worst incident was where I invited someone over to our house I had been flirting with to see if they could play bass guitar as well as they said they could (I was genuinely trying to start a band at the time), and with a conveniently late other guitar player, I found myself alone at my house with someone I had been flirting with for an hour before the other guy showed up. It was awkward, but I didn't do anything with them. I chose to be faithful when I had a great opportunity to not be. I may as well have cheated though, because my wife never believed me.
--- I wasn't the best husband or father --- I did my best. We both came from poor backgrounds and had a kid really young, before we even moved out of our parents' house. When we found out about our son, I panicked and thought that an abortion was the best option. I probably said some really dumb things. After letting it sink in for about 2 weeks, I decided I would stay by her side no matter what, and I did. We made a 5-year plan together where we took turns getting our degrees in the most efficient order possible to raise our standard of living. In the process, we both lost our way a little. It was an aggressive timeline. She was largely a stay-at-home mother, and I was working full time and taking classes, so I filled the rest of my time with escapism (video games). This varied a little over the years, got worse at times, and wasn't so bad at others. For example, we had a courthouse wedding with 1 guest, and then I went to work afterwards. We never had a honeymoon. On the bright side, it's 5 years later and we accomplished our 5-year goal we set out to achieve.
--- She gets emotional payback --- This is where the timeline gets a little more specific, so bear with me. I would later find out in April '24 that in May '23 my wife had flirted with a coworker she thought was cute, being more forward, sexual, and putting herself in more compromising situations (never physical, that I could tell) than I had been at my worst back at the beginning of our relationship. Our relationship anniversary was in May, so I believe her respect for me had eroded at that point to a very dangerous level. None of this was ever communicated, and it never would've come to light had I not snooped for it a year later. I was finishing my degree and getting my first major job in the career I wanted - I even took a month off due to stress, and likely wasn't in a receptive place for communication, but I don't remember any attempts to communicate that she was feeling so abandoned.
--- She goes all the way --- In December '23, a bad influence friend at work introduced her to a guy. She went on a date with him, and they fucked on the first date in her car. They would go on dates regularly, and sleep together all the time doing a lot of experimental things. I remember a really bad yeast infection from this time, and I remember her forgetting to pick up the kid from school on multiple occasions and calling in the middle of important meetings to demand I drop everything I was doing and cover for her. She would sometimes come home at 11pm - 2am, or go visit 'friends' after 8pm on work nights, leaving me with all the chores very frequently.
--- She finds the one --- Well that guy was too controlling or something, and she breaks up with him. She finds another guy very shortly after, and falls head over heels. The shirking responsibilities gets worse, and I shout at her over the phone for the first time - forgetting to pick up our 5 year old son from school and forgetting to call me. Again. She wouldn't eat dinner with us, she rarely showed up at home after work, sex at this point was rare and always 'just a quickie' to sate me and get it over with. I felt like absolute dogshit at this point, and in February '24 I decided to reprioritize my ADHD meds for anxiety ones, work out more, try to initiate more family activities, be more engaged.. but it was too late. She called me 'suffocating' and accused me of having an axious attachment style - claiming that she needed space.
--- I learn everything --- April 1st. I had food poisoning and was up all night. I saw a notification on her phone at 3am in spanish about love. I was beyond suspicious at this point, and looked. The whole past year lit up like a christmas tree. All the blanks filled in. All the sexts. All the meetups. All the strange purchases. I confronted her at 5am. We took a week off work. We cried a lot. I decided wanted to give her the chance to make this right. 1 day later we had a plan for ending things with the 2nd guy. She couldn't do it over the phone or text, so I agreed she could meet with him alone. It made me wildly uncomfortable, so because she left at 7pm I told her to be home by midnight, or I'll know where her priorities are. I needed her to decide that she wanted to be with me on her own, not me make the decision for her. I called her at 12:01am, and she said 'I'm coming home, he's getting out of my car' in a rushed tone. I don't need to tell you how that 'breakup' went.
--- A work 'emergency' --- April 14th. We're working on things. She's being more communicative. We're both spending a lot of time together and genuinely trying. 2 weeks later she doesn't come home on time with vague excuses and half-asses explanations. After work, she had gone and picked up the 2nd guy for a doctor's appointment (he doesn't have a car and is an immigrant) which turned into a hospital visit. I confronted her the next day. I already saw proof, and wanted her to admit it before I showed her that I already knew. Lies to the end. We fought, but eventually we moved on. She claims work emergency. I call it bad judgement and bad faith. She could've called him an ambulance, like her boss said she should've. I was hurt again, and resolved that if it happens again that I'd leave. I couldn't handle it anymore.
--- It happens again --- May 4th. We were having a nice family moment looking at memes on her phone, and a text pops up at the top by the 2nd guy again from a new, secret account on an app I didn't think to check. My brain just shut down for 48 hours. I told her we were done and that she needs to move out. She cried, begged, and pleaded for hours and hours on end. Our son was freaking out. She couldn't keep it together around him, and eventually sadness turned to anger. She leveled every wrong I had ever committed over 10 years at me in the presence of our 5 year old, and proceeded to call all her family members and tell them how horrible I was - never mentioned cheating. I called my family to have someone to talk to, and I drove away. I couldn't sit there and listen to that. That night we talked before she left for her sister's place with the kid. Neither of us wanted to split up. We decided to try again with renewed knowledge about how bad things really could be if we split up.
--- Things do get better, until they don't --- May 13th? I honestly can't remember how this went down, but again we were doing better until about May 13th when I checked her phone again, just to see, and found that WhatsApp has locked chats for both the 2nd guy AND the 1st guy from December, and they were locked with a new password she never told me about (we agreed she would give me her phone code back on May 4th). Yep, it never stopped. On top of that, here comes the suffocation argument again. Not only was she not sorry, but she was angry with me for snooping and not trusting her. I told her she couldn't keep talking to them, and decided to just disassociate and enjoy surface level moments with her for the next two weeks to give her more space and see what happens. I didn't look at her phone. I didn't talk about my feelings except once or twice. I spent more time with my creative hobbies and exercise (which I was now seeing the results of)
--- The pain continues --- May 27th. We celebrated our 10 year anniversary (nobody sent us a card lol). We went horseback riding. We went to a convention. We had fun. I notice suspicious activity, but I pretend it's not happening. Yesterday I saw her hurriedly exiting the locked chats again that I never got access to. I snapped like a twig. It was all a lie and I knew it. I called her a piece of trash in front of my son. I stormed out. I came back later that night and we talked. Briefly. Both of us are exhausted with this fiasco. I've been avoiding an ultimatum because it's toxic, but I gave it last night. If it happens again it's over for real. But honestly? I don't see us coming back from this. I'm mad. Maybe I'll feel better again in a few days, but it's gotten to the point where I don't even know if I feel love for her anymore. She loves this other guy. She can't stop seeing him. She can't stop sending him nudes. She's obsessed.
After 2 full months of excruciating pain caused on purpose repeatedly by the person I trusted the most, I still want to believe in us, but at this point I really don't think there's much hope. What do I do?

Hola, ¿qué tal? My name is Jhon Pérez, a native Spanish tutor with over 10 years of experience in Spanish homework. I can help you with any type of Spanish assignments: exams, quizzes, tests, worksheets and essays.
I've done many accounts on VHL Central, McGraw Hill, Blackboard, Canvas, MyLabs, Cengage, Desire2Learn, ELEteca, Edgenuity, Contraseña, WileyPlus and more.
Besides being a native Spanish speaker, I have knowledge of vocabulary, functional grammar and the functions of all levels of Spanish (Beginners A1-A2, Intermediate B1-B2 and Advanced C1-C2.)
I can work with login, TeamViewer and screenshots. If you choose the latter I will make sure to be online at the agreed time to work with you (you send the screenshots and I send the answers.)
This is not an agency. It's just me, the Spanish tutor, so you don't have to pay double fees (one to the agency owner and another to the tutor.)
Unlike other Spanish tutors, I will provide you with safe, untraceable VPN connection to your closest location and follow your instruction(s) to deliver plagiarism-free Spanish papers.
For tight deadlines I can deliver the same day as long as I am contacted at least 4 hours before deadline.
My rates are pocket-friendly and flexible to fit your budget. You can use milestone payments or pay as you go.
Proof and vouches can be seen on my profile.
Send your prompt and get a quote today!
Email: [jperezonline@outlook.com](mailto:jperezonline@outlook.com)
Discord: jperez
¡Nos vemos!

Hola, ¿qué tal? My name is Jhon Pérez, a native Spanish tutor with over 10 years of experience in Spanish homework. I can help you with any type of Spanish assignments: exams, quizzes, tests, worksheets and essays.
I've done many accounts on VHL Central, McGraw Hill, Blackboard, Canvas, MyLabs, Cengage, Desire2Learn, ELEteca, Edgenuity, Contraseña, WileyPlus and more.
Besides being a native Spanish speaker, I have knowledge of vocabulary, functional grammar and the functions of all levels of Spanish (Beginners A1-A2, Intermediate B1-B2 and Advanced C1-C2.)
I can work with login, TeamViewer and screenshots. If you choose the latter I will make sure to be online at the agreed time to work with you (you send the screenshots and I send the answers.)
This is not an agency. It's just me, the Spanish tutor, so you don't have to pay double fees (one to the agency owner and another to the tutor.)
Unlike other Spanish tutors, I will provide you with safe, untraceable VPN connection to your closest location and follow your instruction(s) to deliver plagiarism-free Spanish papers.
For tight deadlines I can deliver the same day as long as I am contacted at least 4 hours before deadline.
My rates are pocket-friendly and flexible to fit your budget. You can use milestone payments or pay as you go.
Proof and vouches can be seen on my profile.
Send your prompt and get a quote today!
Email: [jperezonline@outlook.com](mailto:jperezonline@outlook.com)
Discord: jperez
¡Nos vemos!

Hola, ¿qué tal? My name is Jhon Pérez, a native Spanish tutor with over 10 years of experience in Spanish homework. I can help you with any type of Spanish assignments: exams, quizzes, tests, worksheets and essays.
I've done many accounts on VHL Central, McGraw Hill, Blackboard, Canvas, MyLabs, Cengage, Desire2Learn, ELEteca, Edgenuity, Contraseña, WileyPlus and more.
Besides being a native Spanish speaker, I have knowledge of vocabulary, functional grammar and the functions of all levels of Spanish (Beginners A1-A2, Intermediate B1-B2 and Advanced C1-C2.)
I can work with login, TeamViewer and screenshots. If you choose the latter I will make sure to be online at the agreed time to work with you (you send the screenshots and I send the answers.)
This is not an agency. It's just me, the Spanish tutor, so you don't have to pay double fees (one to the agency owner and another to the tutor.)
Unlike other Spanish tutors, I will provide you with safe, untraceable VPN connection to your closest location and follow your instruction(s) to deliver plagiarism-free Spanish papers.
For tight deadlines I can deliver the same day as long as I am contacted at least 4 hours before deadline.
My rates are pocket-friendly and flexible to fit your budget. You can use milestone payments or pay as you go.
Proof and vouches can be seen on my profile.
Send your prompt and get a quote today!
Email: [jperezonline@outlook.com](mailto:jperezonline@outlook.com)
Discord: jperez
¡Nos vemos!

Hello everybody
Allow me to introduce myself. My name is João Victor Vila. I am a Spanish soundtrack composer and producer with a deep love for sea shanties and folk songs.
A few months ago, I met Dave Peace in Brixham, UK. Dave leads a small local band that performs charity shows. When he learned about my work, he invited me to collaborate on a song for the 200th anniversary of the Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI). Here's a bit of the story:
On January 1, 1915, HMS Formidable was struck by two torpedoes from a German U-boat while patrolling the English Channel during a storm, causing it to sink. Of the 750 to 780 crew members, 547 perished, many in lifeboats overwhelmed by the storm. However, 71 men were rescued by the Provident, a Brixham trawler, thanks to the skill of Captain William Pillar and his small crew. They earned the Albert Medal and rewards from the Admiralty. Dave, a member of the RNLI in Brixham, found this story inspiring, leading us to write a song about it.
The Provident, currently in Scotland for tourist trips, returned to Brixham yesterday for a Trawler Festival. Dave and I connected with the crew and performed the song publicly for the first time on the deck of the Provident. We presented them with a framed version of the lyrics and chords, now displayed in the ship's cabin.
Since this project supports charity, we’re reaching out to the sea shanty community to see if anyone is interested in creating a version of the song. We're offering the song for free, only requesting that anyone who covers it shares the RNLI charity link and credits us as the composers in the video description. We're also okay with linking a charity of your choice. As long as this song helps someone we're okay with that. I can provide the lyrics, chords, and a video of the premiere for you to listen. So If you play an instrument professionally or not, we invite you to have a go.
For more information feel free to DM me. Here are some interesting links and a few versions of the song.
My Website: https://www.joaovictorvila.design/
Video of the premiere on the deck of the Provident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPqW9-nhIEs
Chords and Lyrics: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fveurwNmPh2Kv9oh9sQoq1uQfv3Y2QXO/view?usp=sharing
Music Sheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1InUbE_Bhh0jjYw7Sv-F0uQkiPjJzyD8b/view?usp=sharing
RNLI: https://rnli.org/

Ibn Khaldūn

27 May 1332 - 17 March 1406
Today in Philosophy of History
Ibn Khaldūn and the Introduction to History
Monday 27 May 2024 is the 692nd anniversary of the birth of Abū Zayd 'Abd ar-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Khaldūn al-Ḥaḍramī, better known to posterity as Ibn Khaldūn (27 May 1332 – 17 March 1406), who was born in Tunis, under the Hafsid Sultanate, on this date in 1332 AD. His dates in the Islamic lunar calendar are 732 to 808 of the Hejira Era.
Ibn Khaldūn was a Tunisian Arabic philosopher and historian who wrote a singular treatise, The Maqqadimmah, which discusses politics, history, sociology, philosophy of history, and related problems. A contemporary philosopher of history, Hayden White, wrote of Ibn Khaldūn:

“Readers of Toynbee’s Study will know that Ibn Khaldun has been acclaimed as the producer of ‘the greatest work of its kind that has ever been created by any mind in any time or place.’ Toynbee enshrines Ibn Khaldun in a pantheon which houses Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Josephus, St. Augustine, Gibbon and Turgot; and of that group, Ibn Khaldun seems, at least at first glance, the most modern of all. Evidence of his modernity is reflected in the dispute between historians and sociologists for the honor of claiming him as their own.”

White is correct that historians and sociologists have both sought to claim Ibn Khaldūn as their own, but he further notes, “Ibn Khaldūn cannot be classified as either historian or sociologist with any sort of terminological accuracy.” Here is some of Toynbee’s fulsome praise for Ibn Khaldun, which includes the bit quoted by White:

“In his chosen field of intellectual activity he appears to have been inspired by no predecessors, and to have found no kindred souls among his contemporaries, and to have kindled no answering spark of inspiration in any successors; and yet, in the Prolegomena (Muquddamat) to his Universal History he has conceived and formulated a philosophy of history which is undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever yet been created by any mind in any time or place.”

Ibn Khaldun’s great book is The Maqqadimmah, which means prolegomena, which means that it was intended as an introduction to the study of history, sort of like Jean Bodin’s Method for the Easy Comprehension of History. Some call The Maqqadimmah a history; some call it a work of historiography; some call it a philosophy of history; some have called it the first work of sociology. It could be said that The Maqqadimmah contains elements of all of these. We’re probably best off sticking with Ibn Khaldun’s original intention, which is that it an introduction to history rather than history itself. This sense of being an introduction to the study of history comes out clearly in an early passage from The Maqqadimmah:

“The (writing of history) requires numerous sources and greatly varied knowledge. It also requires a good speculative mind and thoroughness. (Possession of these two qualities) leads the historian to the truth and keeps him from slips and errors. If he trusts historical information in its plain transmitted form and has no clear knowledge of the principles resulting from custom, the fundamental facts of politics, the nature of civilization, or the conditions governing human social organization, and if, furthermore, he does not evaluate remote or ancient material through comparison with near or contemporary material, he often cannot avoid stumbling and slipping and deviating from the highroad of truth.”

Still, The Maqqadimmah belongs to a number of unclassifiable works that touch on many aspects of human life and experience. Unclassifiable books are difficult to assimilate, and The Maqqadimmah presents additional problems for us. We all have difficulty understanding a work written in a fundamentally different historical era, with its alien presuppositions. For westerners, as well, there is the difficulty of reading a work conceived within a distinct civilization. But these barriers can be overcome.
The Islamic Golden Age is in some respects less alien to us than the European middle ages, since it is, like classical antiquity, and like our own times, a time of cosmopolitanism, of aspirations to universality, of plenty, and of routine travel. We can read writers like Ibn Khaldūn, Ibn Fadlan, and Ibn Battutah as though they were contemporaries, whereas the works of Wolfram von Eschenbach and Gottfried von Strassburg strike us as strange, even when we find in them much that is familiar. Perhaps the virtue of being readable to posterity comes at the cost being alienated from one’s own time.
Barbara Stowasser wrote of Ibn Khaldūn in “Ibn Khaldun’s Philosophy of History: The Rise and Fall of States and Civilizations”:

“…Ibn Khaldun’s ideas were in some ways too realistic and hence revolutionary for the intellectually stagnant society in which he lived and worked. There is very little evidence that he had any impact on Arab thought in the late 14th or early 15th centuries. It was only in the 16th and particularly in the 17th centuries that an Ibn Khaldun rediscovery got underway, and the people who rediscovered and read and commented upon him were the Ottoman Turks. The Ottomans, as you know, concentrated much of their intellectual interest upon history and political thought, and they were fascinated with Ibn Khaldun. In the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, the study of Ibn Khaldun constituted an important segment of Turkish intellectual history. It was only in the 19th century that Europe joined the Turks in reading Ibn Khaldun.”

It is the fate of many substantive thinkers to be unappreciated in their own time. We know that no prophet is accepted in his own country, just as we know that the past is a foreign country. We could add to that that the future is a foreign country to the past. So therein lies the rub: later generations are arguably less well equipped to appreciate a work neglected in its own time, being further removed from the lived experience that was the inspiration of the work. Also we project our own concerns into a past innocent of the world we take for granted.
To a certain extent, this is unavoidable. Most of the terminology that we have today for discussing historiography and philosophy of history did not yet exist for ibn Khaldūn, so in order to see the relevance of his work we often have to translate his ideas into a modern idiom, and there are certain hazards in doing so. That’s why Hayden White wrote that Ibn Khaldun can’t be called an historian or a sociologist with any terminological accuracy. But what about conceptual accuracy? Say we agree that Ibn Khaldun is not an historian in the modern sense of the term. How then is he to be mapped onto the conceptual space of history?
I would argue that the hazards increase as we approach foundational concepts, and it is the nature of a work like The Maqqadimmah to engage with foundational concepts. The idea of history is itself a foundational concept, and the idea of knowledge is a foundational concept, and science, and so on. When we read Chapter VI of The Maqqadimmah we find a catalogue of knowledge (or sciences) that sets alchemy next to logic, and Sufism next to dream interpretation, which, to the modern mind, seems like a category error. In this sense, Ibn Khaldun reads more like St. Thomas Aquinas than a contemporary.
If we want to extract from The Maqqadimmah the perennial lessons it has to teach, we have to take it out of the context in which it was formulated. Its context is a world now lost to us, which can only be recovered with great difficulty. Part of this difficulty, for example, is that there is a lot in The Muquaddimah about magic, divination, and sorcery. Take the following, for instance:

“In the Ghayah, Maslamah . . . mentioned that when a human being is placed in a barrel of sesame oil and kept in it for forty days, is fed with figs and nuts until his flesh is gone and only the arteries and the sutures of the skull remain, and is then taken out of the oil and exposed to the drying action of the air, he will answer all special and general questions regarding the future that may be asked. This is detestable sorcery. However, it shows what remarkable things exist in the world of man.” (Sixth Prefatory Discussion to Chapter II)

It’s worth observing that this is a falsifiable methodology, but it is unlikely to have been tried a number of times sufficient to get statistically significant confirmatory or disconfirmatory evidence. I do wonder how many readers of Maslamah did actually attempt this. On the one hand, Ibn Khaldun seems to credit this sorcery as possibly efficacious. On the other hand, his scientific detachment is evident from his final remark: he notes that this is detestable, but it remains interesting as testimony to the remarkable things that we find in the world of man. And we do find remarkable things in the world. Ibn Khaldun is absolutely right about that. I suspect that the scientifically detached Ibn Khaldun would have been ready to discuss the possibility of confirmatory or disconfirmatory evidence for sorcery. It is this scientifically detached Ibn Khaldun that we must extract from the intellectual and cultural context in which sorcery is commonplace.
While we do an author a certain degree of violence by thus extracting his ideas from their human, all-too-human context, it is not at all unusual. Reading Saint Augustine is not all that different: there is much that I have extracted from Saint Augustine that I find to be of value, despite his many digressions to profess his faith. Augustine, too, like Ibn Khaldun, is interested in divination and demonology, and since we don’t credit this today we tend to gloss over these sections, although they were a large part of Augustine’s world, as they were also a large art of Ibn Khaldun’s world. Do we sacrifice this world in order to derive the perennial lessons, or do we keep Ibn Khaldun (and Saint Augustine) whole and intact, treating them as mere historical figures whose work no longer bears upon our world?
I touched on this previously in my episode on J. G. A. Pocock and contextualism, since the context of Ibn Khaldun’s work is almost unrecoverable to us, and I said that we have to strip away this context to get at what is perennially true in his work. What do we have if we don’t strip away the unfamiliar context? Robert Irwin in his book Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography had this to say:

“It is precisely Ibn Khaldun’s irrelevance to the modern world that makes him so interesting and important. When I read the Muqaddima, I have the sense that I am encountering a visitor from another planet—and that is exciting. There have been other ways of looking at the world than the one we mostly take for granted today.”

Some years ago a correspondent said something not unlike this to me. The society that Ibn Khaldun described no longer exists. As such, we could say that his work belongs to historical sociology, but that isn’t an adequate way to understand the book. Understanding the book in the fullness of its historical, social, and cultural context alienate the work from us and our concerns, and this meaning can only be recovered by means of the patient contextual methods pursued by Pocock and others of the contextualist school.
Despite the strangeness, there are moments within The Maqqadimmah when Ibn Khaldun seems to affirm the categories of our thought and his argument makes perfect sense. For example:

“People who grow up in villages and uncivilized (thinly populated) cities and who have an innate desire for scientific activity, cannot find scientific instruction in those places. For scientific instruction is something technical, and there are no crafts among the inhabitants of the desert, as we have stated before. These people, therefore, must travel and seek scientific instruction in cities where (civilization) is highly developed, as is the case with all crafts.” (VI, 8)

This quote highlights a theme that runs throughout Ibn Khaldun, and that is the contrast between sedentary life in cities and the nomadic life of the Bedouin of the desert. As we can see in from the previous quote, Ibn Khaldun gives cities their full measure, acknowledging that craft specialization is only to be found in cities, but he also sees the problems with urban life, which are distinct from those of village and desert. He makes some interesting observations on urban juvenile delinquency:

“The city, then, teems with low people of blameworthy character. They encounter competition from many members of the younger generation of the dynasty, whose education has been neglected and whom the dynasty has neglected to accept. They, therefore, adopt the qualities of their environment and company, even though they may be people of noble descent and ancestry. Men are human beings and as such resemble one another. They differ in merit and are distinguished by their character, by their acquisition of virtues and avoidance of vices. The person who is strongly colored by any kind of vice and whose good character is corrupted, is not helped by his good descent and fine origin. Thus, one finds that many descendants of great families, men of a highly esteemed origin, members of the dynasty, get into deep water and adopt low occupations in order to make a living, because their character is corrupt and they are colored by wrongdoing and insincerity. If this (situation) spreads in a town or nation, God permits it to be ruined and destroyed. This is the meaning of the word of God: ‘When we want to destroy a village, we order those of its inhabitants who live in luxury to act wickedly therein. Thus, the word becomes true for it, and we do destroy it’.”(IV, 18)

For Ibn Khladun, then, civilization and its cities are a mixed blessing, and while the Bedouin of the desert do not possess craft specialization, they are also free of the vices and luxury of urban life. Ibn Khaldun also discusses this contrast as it touches upon law:

“When laws are (enforced) by means of punishment, they completely destroy fortitude, because the use of punishment against someone who cannot defend himself generates in that person a feeling of humiliation that, no doubt, must break his fortitude. When laws are (intended to serve the purposes of) education and instruction and are applied from childhood on, they have to some degree the same effect, because people then grow up in fear and docility and consequently do not rely on their own fortitude. For this (reason), greater fortitude is found among the savage Arab Bedouins than among people who are subject to laws. Furthermore, those who rely on laws and are dominated by them from the very beginning of their education and instruction in the crafts, sciences, and religious matters, are thereby deprived of much of their own fortitude. They can scarcely defend themselves at all against hostile acts. This is the case with students, whose occupation it is to study and to learn from teachers and religious leaders, and who constantly apply themselves to instruction and education in very dignified gatherings. This situation and the fact that it destroys the power of resistance and fortitude must be understood.” (II, 6)

One can see in passages like this why many have identified Ibn Khaldun as a sociologist, or a theoretician of culture. In Muhsin Mahdi’s book-length study, Ibn Khaldun’s Philosophy of History: A Study in the Philosophic Foundation of a Science of Culture, Mahdi characterizes Ibn Khaldun’s effort as being toward a “science of culture.” He finishes off his book by taking a swipe at Hegelian philosophies of history:

“Ibn Khaldun did not turn to history to find his standards and goal, or to see how the Idea progressively realizes itself and learn its future course so that he could join the predetermined course of history. For him, future action cannot he determined by any science. It continues to be the product of an art which requires the knowledge of the end of man and society, and the knowledge of the actual circumstances supplied by history, but which must he perfected through experience. Having equipped himself with such knowledge, it remains the responsibility of the wise man to decide what is best under particular circumstances. He is not relieved of the task of making right choices. History, even when ascertained and explained in the light of the new science of culture, may help the wise man to make a better choice, but it does not and cannot choose for him.”

I suspect many people would agree with this, whether or not they have read Ibn Khaldun, or whether or not they have any interest in philosophy of history. Although Ibn Khaldun did not seek his standards and goals in history, he did understand the importance of understanding history on its own merits. Hence the need for an introduction to history.
It is worth reflecting on the idea that an introduction to history may be more difficult than history itself. Insofar as an introduction to history is a guide to the understanding of history, we can see why this is the case, though it seems counterintuitive that an introduction should be more difficult than that to which it introduces us. Anyone can memorize names, dates, and places, and anyone can follow a narrative, but understanding what is happening and why is much more difficult. The Maqqadimmah attempts to assist us with this difficulty.
There is a lot in The Maqqadimmah, but when I think about Ibn Khaldun, I keep coming back to the image of the man in the vat of sesame oil. I can imagine, in my mind’s eye, Ibn Khaldun being told about this, and hearing about it in his travels, he is invited to actually witness this sorcery or something similar. I can see the whole thing in flickering lamplight, being led to some hole in the wall in a dingy part of a city, passing the kind of disreputable characters that Ibn Khaldun wrote about inhabiting cities, and then the door opening onto to bizarre scene of a partially dissolved man being decanted from a barrel of oil. I imagine it like a scene from a Sinbad movie from the 70s.
What would Ibn Khaldun have to say about this? What would he do? How would he respond? For this, I draw on an historical analogy, which might seem a bit strained, but hear me out. When as Westerners we read accounts of the witch craze we start to get a feel for the relative scope of the rationality of the individuals involved. If you read enough, you go beyond the words and you get a sense of the man involved. The man whose words you read is a man of his time, since we all are, but there were different temperaments then as there are today, and some temperaments are skeptical, some credulous, some rational, some practical. And some of these temperaments are more consistent with what we would recognize today as rationality.
Some men confronted with witches and spectral evidence were all in. The kind of man who would be all in for a moral panic in the 16th or 17th century is the same kind of man who would be all in for a moral panic in the 21st century. Some men were skeptical, but willing to listen. We know their type today. Some were pragmatic, uninterested in claims about demons and spirits, only seeing the situation for what it is. These too a familiar characters for us. And, of course, there are men with an intuitive sense of scientific detachment, sometimes skeptical, sometimes pragmatic, always interested, even if horrified. I take ibn Khaldun to be a man like this.
So, to return to the man in the vat of sesame oil, I think Ibn Khaldun confronted with this scene would have been angry about the practice of sorcery, indignant about the treatment of the subject of the experiment, and dismissive of the claims of the sorcerer, whom we can imagine waving his hands and protesting how he has an explanation for everything. Change a few details and this could be any of us today. I’ve seen some strange things in my time—nothing as strange as what Ibn Khaldun describes—but strange enough. Here, I think, we find our connection to Ibn Khaldun and The Maqqadimmah. Circumstances change, but men are what they are in every age. This is the introduction to history that we need, the human side of history, but it’s not the introduction to history we usually get. This is part of what makes The Maqqadimmah both difficult and interesting. It is unfamiliar, but it is a necessary unfamiliarity.

Video Presentation

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https://odysee.com/@Geopolicraticus:7/ibn-khald%C5%ABn-and-the-introduction-to:6

Podcast Edition

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https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-today-in-philosophy-of-his-146507578/episode/ibn-khaldn-and-the-introduction-to-180274520/
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Heinrich Rickert

25 May 1863 – 25 July 1936
Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History
Heinrich Rickert and the Logical Concept of the Historical
Saturday 25 May 2024 is the 161st anniversary of the birth of Heinrich Rickert (25 May 1863 – 25 July 1936), who was born in Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland) on this date in 1863.
A few days ago I was reading Moritz Schlick’s posthumously published Philosophy of Nature and I found the follow in the first section of the book:

“…we have the universal quality and all embracing character of natural science which prevents it from being subordinated to, or ranged alongside, any one of the Arts or cultural sciences. And hence also the unique philosophical significance of natural science: All philosophical progress in the past has arisen out of scientific knowledge and the investigation of scientific problems. It is a very grave mistake—a mistake which was made for the first time during the last hundred years—to believe that the Arts and cultural sciences are in any way equivalent to natural science, or that they are, from the standpoint of philosophy, equally productive.”

The editors added a footnote to this passage:

“These sentences—as Schlick himself explained in detail in his lectures—are directed against views similar to those of Heinrich Rickert (1863-1936) as expressed in his book: Die Grenzen der naturwissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung (Freiburg 1896).”

Schlick was in the thick of things in Vienna a century ago. He was a student of Max Planck, and a friend of Einstein and Hilbert. He wrote philosophical expositions of the theory of relativity and after Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus appeared he was instrumental in the Vienna Circle, which had it origins in discussions of Wittenstein’s work. Schlick was almost 20 years younger than Rickert, but he died young in the same year Rickert died when he was shot by a deranged student at this university, so we could say with some justification that Rickert and Schlick were philosophical contemporaries, though they belonged to different philosophical worlds. That Schlick wanted to define himself in opposition to Rickert is interesting, and tells us something about the scholarly milieu of Rickert’s work. (Schlick also discusses Rickert in his 1929 address “Philosophy and Natural Science” and he briefly criticizes Simmel on related grounds in his Preface to Waismann’s Logik, Sprache, Philosophie. Kritik.)
I wanted to start out with Schlick as a contrast to Rickert, as Rickert is usually mentioned only in conjunction with Dilthey and Windelband, who shared many of his methodological views, and whose work he continued and expanded. Rickert studied under Windelband, and he followed Windelband as professor of philosophy at Heidelberg. (Also, Heidegger was Rickert’ assistant for a time, and Heidegger wrote his habilitation thesis under Rickert.) In a recent episode on Wilhelm Windelband I discussed his distinction between the nomothetic or lawlike sciences, and idiographic or particularistic sciences. This distinction was subsequently taken up by other philosophers of history. Dilthey reacted against Windelband, while Rickert built upon Windelband’s distinction. Both were unsatisfied with the distinction as Windelband originally formulated it, but the distinction was definitely a stimulus to further thought.
This cluster of (neo-Kantian) thinkers is associated with ongoing efforts to formulate a rigorous method for history (and for the historical sciences more generally) distinct from the methods of the empirical sciences. This attempt to formulate a distinctive method for history is connected to the ancient problem of whether or not history is a science. Even if we answer in the affirmative, there follows the further question of what kind of science it is. If we hold that science is one and universal, then the idea of there being multiple forms of scientific method makes no sense at all. On the other hand, if we allow that there are many ways to pursue scientific knowledge, then this opens up the can of worms suggesting that science is not one, but many.
Into this mix of neo-Kantians and theorists of scientific methodology, we can also throw Max Weber. Weber was one of the founders of sociology, and while not a philosopher of history, Weber profoundly influenced both philosophy and history. His famous book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in particular has influenced interpretations of early modern history. A book-length study of Weber’s conception of History, Max Weber’s Vision of History: Ethics and Methods, by Guenther Roth and Wolfgang Schluchter concludes with this paragraph:

“Weber’s philosophy of history was pragmatic rather than pessimistic. Unless we save ourselves, nothing and nobody will save us. Historical knowledge, which comprises the levels of analysis discussed here, is necessary for self-clarification, for deciding what we want and where we want to go. But that knowledge cannot lead to the kind of science of society that would unlock the secrets of history and provide a master key to the future.”

So Weber, too, had something like a philosophy of history, and we shouldn’t be surprised by this since Weber read Rickert’s book The Limits of Concept Formation in Natural Science: A Logical Introduction to the Historical Sciences, which significantly influenced Weber. Guy Oakes in his introduction to this translation of Rickert’s book Weber has having read Rickert in 1902 and praising the book. Oakes also notes in his book Weber and Rickert: Concept Formation in the Cultural Sciences
the reliance of Weber on Rickert’s work:

“…much of the philosophical vocabulary of Weber’s methodological writings is borrowed from Rickert. The concepts of the irrationality of reality, the hiatus irrationalis between concept and reality, the historical individual, and value relevance, for example, are all drawn from Rickert’s work. In addition, Weber frequently relies upon lines of argument that seem to reproduce strategies employed in Rickert’s writings. Weber’s critique of positivism, his method of demarcating the cultural sciences from the natural sciences, his distinction between value relevance and value judgments, and his conception of methodology as a theory of concept formation all appear to be based on arguments that are more fully developed in Rickert’s work. Finally, when Weber judges that a systematic statement of his own position is necessary or when he sets out a position without developing the arguments required for its support, he regularly refers the reader to Rickert.”

Yet while Weber famously held that scientific knowledge is “value free” (vertfrei), Rickert can be understood as anticipating virtue epistemology as values are central to his exposition of historical knowledge. In the following passage Rickert shows how he can both affirm Weber’s conception of the natural sciences as value free and the historical sciences as being about values, by employing value itself as the distinction between two kinds of object of scientific knowledge:

“…values always attach to cultural objects. Therefore, we shall call them goods, in order to distinguish them as valuable entities from the values as such, which, considered in themselves, are not real at all and can be disregarded. Science does not conceive of the objects of nature as goods. On the contrary, it views them as devoid of value and without relevance to it. If we abstract every value from our conception of a cultural object, we can say that it thereby becomes the same as a mere object of nature or that it can be scientifically treated as such. The presence or absence of relevance to values can thus serve as a reliable criterion for distinguishing between two kinds of scientific objects. Indeed, in the interest of methodology, this is the only criterion we can employ here, because apart from the value attaching to it every real cultural phenomenon must also be capable of being regarded as connected with nature and even as a part of nature. It will be shown later to what extent relevance to values is the determining factor in the logical structure of the historical sciences that deal with cultural phenomena.” (From “Nature and Culture,” included in Science and History: A Critique of Positivist Epistemology)

Rickert’s book The Limits of Concept Formation in Natural Science: A Logical Introduction to the Historical Sciences, which is, so far, only available in an abridgement in its English language edition, is a tightly and continuously argued book. That means that there is much that can be learned from it, but also that it poses a kind of challenge. Rickert’s influence in Anglo-American philosophy of history is almost non-existent, and I think at least one reason for this is the challenge that the book presents. It’s easier just to ignore it than to take the trouble to refute it.
I’m not saying that no one could counter Rickert’s arguments, but despite Schlick’s explicit criticism of Rickert, which the editors of Schlick’s book said was more detailed in Schlick’s lectures, I don’t know of any detailed critique of Rickert in Anglophone philosophy of history. Louis O. Mink cites Rickert in passing, and offers a brusque criticism of the core ideas that Rickert developed, saying that historical uniqueness:

“…has… been the basis of attempts, notably by Windelband and Rickert, to define history as knowledge of the concrete and the particular rather than the abstract and general. But the proto-science view can cogently argue that this will not serve to distinguish history from science, because no two physical events are exactly identical either, and, moreover, a physical fact is just as concrete and particular as an historical fact.”

For Mink, proto-science is a body of knowledge that has not yet achieved scientific status, and he argues that history is a proto-science that has yet to conform to the paradigm of the natural sciences. In other words, history isn’t a different kind of science, only a body of knowledge that has not yet been made scientific. Thus Mink is aware of the issues raised by Rickert, but doesn’t feel any obligation to engage more deeply with Rickert’s argument.
There are a handful of English language books on philosophy of history that build on Rickert’s work (like Guy Oakes’ book mentioned previously), but I don’t find him cited often outside the circle of his direct influence. This is unfortunate, since Rickert has a lot to contribute to debates specific to the concerns of Anglophone philosophy of history. For example, Collingwood is one of the most influential English language philosopher’s of history, and a full generation prior to Collingwood, Rickert preemptively criticized one of the central themes of Collingwood, namely, that history is the reenactment of the thoughts of past historical actors. Pages 165 to 175 of the English translation of Rickert are a discussion of re-creation that is relevant to Collingwood’s conception of reenactment. Rickert has this to say:

“…as regards the meaning of the mental life of other persons, we may perhaps acquire direct access to the individuality of its nonreal meaning, but never to the individuality of its real existence.” (p. 164)

What does this mean for Collingwood? Is reenactment possible or impossible according to Rickert? Because Rickert’s book is one long argument, to appreciate the relevance of his remarks on re-creation to Collingwood we can’t take any one quote such as I have just given in isolation. A fuller exposition is necessary to get at Rickert’s conception of nonreal meaning, for example.
Rickert emphasizes that his is a logical inquiry into the nature of the concepts of natural science and history, though his logic is a philosophical logic focused on concepts.

“What is it that fixes the limits of concept formation in natural science, limits that, for logical or formal reasons, the natural sciences can never traverse? This is our first question, even though it need not remain our only question.” (p. 36)

The core of Rickert’s argument in The Limits of Concept Formation in Natural Science is already evident from the title of the book. The concepts of natural science are limited by the individual and the particular:

“We have access to the full content of reality only through the immediacy of life, never by means of the concepts of natural science. The circumstance that the word ‘reality’ can also be the name for the form that we ascribe to the immediately experienced, perceptual, and individual content is of no significance in this context. We designate as real the content that is both individual and also an object of sense perception. Thus it is clear that all the claims that could be made about the relations of natural scientific concept formation to concrete actuality and individuality must also hold true for its relationship to empirical reality itself. The more completely we develop our natural scientific theories and representations, the further we depart from reality as unique, perceptual, and individual…” (p. 39)

In order to formulate propositions in natural science, especially laws of nature, we must limit our concepts to what is generic:

“Suppose we want to know something about the uniqueness, distinctiveness, and individuality of the real. Then we cannot turn to a science for whose concepts the unique and individual configurations of the real event, as well as its perceptual configuration, sets a limit. On the contrary, if there is to be a representation of reality with reference to its uniqueness and individuality, a science is required that diverges logically from natural science in essential points concerning the form of its concept formation. From this point on, our task is to identify the logical structure of this science, to distinguish its mode of concept formation from that of every natural science, and thus to establish the principle for a logical articulation of the empirical sciences, a task directly linked with the demonstration of the limits of concept formation in natural science.” (p. 47)

The concepts necessary to history are to be found on the other side of this limitation on the concepts of natural science:

“When the concept is formed on the basis of a single individual reality, however, the historical concept includes precisely what distinguishes the different individuals from one another. Either it completely disregards what is common to them, or it retains this only insofar as that is indispensable to the definition of their individuality. Thus we meet a kind of conceptualization in which the content of science does not become increasingly remote from the individuality of reality, which was the case for the sort of simplification produced by concepts of nature. On the contrary, by its means the content of science is formed in such a way that it expresses the individuality—even if not the perceptuality—of empirical existence.” (p. 100)

But the concepts employed in history are not only individual and particular, they are also value-laden, which Rickert formulates in terms of teleology:

“Insofar as the unity of the historical individual is always based on a value relation, it can be called a teleological unity, and historical individuals can be called teleological individuals. This is connected with the consideration that the concept of purpose is conceived as the concept of a future good that is to be realized. In other words, it is linked with the concept of a value that is attached to it. In consequence, we generally call every way of thinking in which values play a decisive role ‘teleological.’ In that case, concept formation in history, which has to conform to this sort of teleological formation of individuals, can also be seen as teleological. Accordingly, concept formations in history can be distinguished from those of natural science as teleological concept formations.” (p. 101)

At this point we can see how surprising it is that Rickert influenced Weber, the great advocate of value-free science. For Rickert, the concepts employed by history are characterized by their value component, and this, as much as their uniqueness, individuality, and particularity, marks them out as being logically distinction from the concepts of natural science.
Rickert presents us with a picture of scientific inquiry as approaching the barrier of individuality from the side of natural science, and on the other side of this barrier we find the historical sciences. The totality of scientific inquiry, then, has this chasm between the two modes of inquiry proper to the natural sciences and the historical sciences. Do the nomothetic and the idiographic sciences meet seamlessly in the middle, like a piece of joinery? Or do they leave a gap, a hiatus irrationalis, between them? And, if they leave a gap, what would we find in that gap, and what kind concept formation would be necessary to make an inquiry into the point of transition from the natural to the historical sciences?

Video Presentation

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Podcast Edition

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​

i sent him this email today, i know he doesn't read emails, what would you think if you got this? we broke up because of his anxiety and depression, he felt he couldn't be there for me anymore, we were great these last 6 months but trust me we were for a long time. i know be doesn't read his emails typically so i sent this... tell me ur thoughts if you stayed long enough to read it "from what i can remember you don't really read your emails maybe you will but if you don't that's okay, this email will exist in the world at least i still love you i still want to have summer with you and fall and winter i'll remember our anniversary 8 years this year i'll think of how we would've been in salem i was hoping that could've been our tradition we got what, three years out of it i think? the first year we went i had a terrible stomach ache oh my god that was bad i'll think of you this summer when i'm in maine at the restaurant i won't order the bacon cheese fries it's too much food for me and it'll just remind me of you i won't even finish attack on titan unless it's with you i can't, it was an us thing not a me thing i'll never even know what happens in naruto either, i won't bother looking it up, i hope we can watch it together someday i dont think i can see the new into the spider verse when it comes out, my favorite movies but only because of you and they're only my favorite when im watching them with you i cant watch la la land, you love it so much and i should've watched when you told me to, it's too late now i hated the movies but i loved it with you, and your brother i liked when he came with us it felt like family time we were family i packed up everything, all my funko pops are in the closet in a box with my tummy hurts sweater and my birthday card you got me last year and some other things, this poetry book you got me when we were still seniors in high school that i kept all these years, they're all in a box marked "you" i was going to give away my prom dress too but it just feels wrong i threw away my Sakura halloween costume, i'll never wear it again and it was the easiest thing to get rid of, i want to give you back the pretty orchid lego set, i think i will soon, you might find it outside your house one day. i wake up and its right there, reminding me of you every morning and night, like a knife in my chest, but i can't throw it away! i think it just needs a different home for now what would we have been like living together? i think you would've been eating a lot more fruits and veggies with me, i would've cut them up for us at the beginning of every week on our days off we would've rotted away in bed together, id try to do chores and you would try to stop me and get me to lay with you i would vacuum with my head phones on blasting taylor swift and maybe you'd clean the bathroom? i wouldn't mind doing it either, we would just have to split the chores some how maybe you'd make me an egg sandwich instead of me always making them for you your mom was eventually gonna teach me how to make tortillas i was hoping, i love her fresh tortillas i can't wear that gold chain she got me should i give it back to you also? i dont want to her hurt feelings (his cat) was gonna come with us too, i would've loved to live with him, i want a pet again, i miss my dog so much i love (his cat) so much, he would've been the bandaid on my broken heart caused from loosing her (my dog), i hope he lives forever we could've gotten another kitten, maybe a girl and i could name her
i thought maybe at our wedding we'd do different segments of your spanish and my white people music lol, i wanted to learn a song for you and sing it in front of everyone, i always pictured taking singing lessons for our wedding to sing you something beautiful and corny we could've had two first dances, one to a taylor swift song and one to a song of your choice i wanted to say some vows in spanish and embarrass myself in front of everyone to do it i never wanted a diamond engagement ring, maybe something green or purple, i told my mom that so she knows, she probably would've told you i know we weren't perfect but we were best friends we grew into amazing people together, our comfort level people would kill for you didnt judge me with all gross farts and burps you saw my body the way no one has and maybe no one will, i cant give myself to someone the way i did to you, my first love i wish i told you i loved you more, because i do, i can admit i was also unsure of marrying you, simply because we are so young still, but id be proud to be your wife, you think i wanted/needed to be with a girl, yes women are beautiful but so are you, you are the most beautiful you are beautiful inside and out, you always have been, your beautiful hair, i'm sorry for the time i bleached it and turned it green, i really thought i knew what i was doing!! i didn't .... maybe in another life we are high school sweethearts i know it's uncommon but isn't it just so sweet to think that we could've found the one at only 17 you broke my heart at 17, then came back and healed it again, you showed me what a man could be, how a man could take care of me, you also showed me how a man can crumble and fall apart, it's all normal and all apart of life, the ups and downs, it's normal, you can find yourself while still loving me, at least i was able to, i was able to grow and love myself by loving you, you helped my anxiety, my body imagine and my mindset we were so beautiful our time feels almost too short together most people wouldn't say 7 years is short but when a life time exists it is too short you sent me an email on valentine's day that reads "good evening! i’d like to inform you that i’ve been thinking about you all night, and hope that we can meet soon, and hope all is well!
love,
(his name) Professional Boyfriend Xoxo" maybe you'll want to be my professional boyfriend again, if not in this life maybe the next i always wanted to dance with you, i feel like we never really danced a lot because im shy, im sorry im shy can we dance in the rain together in the next life maybe can we make love in a car once? be a little risky, i'd be down i hope we can remember how i said i wouldn't want someone to propose to me at a taylor swift concert? that doesn't sound so bad now, being your wife doesn't sound bad at all, i would keep my last name but still i would have your child, maybe only one because it gives me anxiety but i could do it for you, again maybe in the next life or maybe we did in our last life together or maybe we could just be pet parents you can decide i'm just along for the ride can we go to texas to visit your cousins? tell them that i loved them, they are beautiful and so sweet, i wish i could've seen them again, they are so fun, tell those girls i'll miss them wendy's, starbucks, espresso martinis, downeast, tavern in the square, boston calling, maine, salem, the movies, cologne, me and u by cassie, book smart, 110 grill, pupusas there's no end to what reminds me of you because everything is you there's nothing with out you just emptiness if you come back i'll be here with open arms ready to make up the time we lost, we can start planning for the future right away, what's our next trip? europe? we'd have to save up a lot but i want to see italy, they have good gluten free food, we can make endless memories, i hope we didn't stop making memories memories i wish i had more of when you come back we'll make more there's memories i want to forget but i know i never will, you will always hold the biggest chunk of my heart and soul we can't be friends, because you're still the love of my life "i'll still see it, until i die, you're the loss of my life" xoxo your ex professional girlfriend"

I'm in charge of the translation into Spanish. Until now I have not been able to test the translation in the game, so many things have the gender or number changed, many others I did not correct from the previous translation and there are small errors such as missing periods, commas that are not where they should, words without space, capital letters where they don't belong, lack of accents... Little things that don't look so good in an Excel but that are better noticeable in the game. If you find anything about this let me know, you can open a direct message here if necessary
If you find something in English or it is part of the tutorials, you don't need to let me know, since the parts in English are beyond my control to fix and I am already redoing the tutorial.
Any inconsistency or anything that you think can be improved, I'm all ears, I have already started to correct this beta that they just released
The more you will help me detect those errors before we all have a game with an improved translation worthy of any triple A.
It would also be nice if you let me know if I have slipped in the English quotes somewhere. These: "a". I have put the Spanish quotes. These: "a".
These quotation marks offer more versatility for Spanish, since you can put double quotation marks «A"aa"A». I'm trying to follow a style guide I made when I took over the translation, but it's an hard job so that's why I need your help, because it's easy for these kinds of things to be overlooked in an Excel.
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Me encargo de la traducción al español. Hasta ahora no he podido probar la traducción en el juego, por lo que muchas cosas tienen el género o el número cambiado, otras tantas no las corregí de la traducción anterior y hay pequeños errores como falta de puntos, comas que no están donde deben, palabras sin espacio, mayúsculas donde no toca, falta de acentos... Pequeñas cosas que en un excel no se ven tan bien pero que en el juego se notan mejor. Si encontráis algo de esto avisadme, podéis abrirme mensaje directo por aquí si es necesario
Si encontráis algo en inglés o forma parte de los tutoriales no hace falta que me lo aviséis, ya que las partes en inglés están fuera de mi control el solucionarlo y el tutorial lo estoy rehaciendo ya
Cualquier incongruencia o cosa que creáis que se puede mejorar soy todos los oídos, ya he empezado a corregir esta beta que acaban de sacar
Cuantos más me ayudaréis a detectar esos errores antes de tener todos un juego con una traducción mejorada y digna de cualquier triple A.
También estaría bien si me avisáis si se me han colado las comillas inglesas en alguna parte. Estas: "a". He puesto las comillas españolas. Estas: «a».
Estas comillas ofrecen más versatilidad para el castellano, ya que se puede poner doble encomillado «A"aa"A». Estoy intentando seguir una guía de estilo que hice cuando tomé las riendas de la traducción, pero es un trabajo costoso así que por eso necesito tu ayuda, porque es fácil que se pasen por alto este tipo de cosas en un excel.

It’s the 20^th and 21^st anniversary of Buffy and Angel’s respective cancellations, and regarding the chance of any Buffy-related resurrection the odds are against us and the situation is grim.
Or so Captain Kirk would say.
But he also said he didn’t believe in the no-win scenario.
And just the other day, I saw a quote which put its finger adroitly on the problem:
“We could luck out and get a Fargo situation where the show intelligently builds on the source material with a new creative lead, but that’s so rare I don’t really have much hope.”
(Bacon_00 ; television ; January 2024)
On the face of it, Buffy ain’t coming back any time soon, if at all. And the belief that it so perfectly caught that turn-of-the-millennium teen zeitgeist that it shouldn’t even be attempted has genuine merit. Sometimes, you just can’t go home again.
However, there is a way, although it would unquestionably need a major fan campaign, the co-operation of all or part of the remaining cast, the help of an extremely powerful Hollywood mover and shaker (think Doomsday on acid) and indeed, a creative lead who could intelligently build on the source material.
Nor must it be forgotten that (as I understand it) Buffy has some of the toughest intellectual property (IP) contracts in the business, which will still stand inviolate when the Earth is a dead star hanging forlornly in space. That’s one reason there have been relatively few spin-offs.
Of all those ingredients, the creative lead might be the most difficult to procure. And how long would it take to create the necessary content?
I’d better start by confessing that I read and reviewed the first novel in Kendare Blake’s Buffy trilogy, and while she is a good writer, I thought it sucked.
So here’s the thing: while Whit Anderson’s Buffy filmscript (and Whit Anderson herself) was being canned, while the Buffy reboot languished in development limbo for five years before being put on “pause” (ie sent to hell and damnation), while Joss Whedon crashed and burned in the biggest inferno since the Hindenburg, and while the audio drama Slayers was being unceremoniously stomped on hard by Disney (now owners of Buffy’s license), there was a bit of secret history going on in the background. An angle nobody expected.
And you’ve never noticed. Not that I haven’t tried to tell you, but it was like whistling in the wind…
To explain, back in 2009 I was an autistic writer in Glasgow on the verge of a nervous breakdown. For fun and therapy, I decided to write a short story about Drusilla the vampire, taking place just after the end of Chosen.
And when I started writing, something very strange happened.
It was like Dru jumped out of her pocket Buffyverse, grabbed on to me for dear life and made it plain I was the one to finish her story.
Like I’d been chosen.
I hit my stride like an ageing athlete who’d been training for twenty years and suddenly finds his peak form. Two crazed months later, Drusilla’s Roses had been written. I then suggested to the National Autistic Society Scotland (NAS) that I cross America blogging about autism and visit the Californian locations I’d used for the story. I also sent a copy of Roses to a certain Juliet Landau in Hollywood, equally certain I’d never get any reply.
Although I was autistic, I’d managed to live and work in Australia for a year twenty years before. But whether I could regain my previous form and function in the field again was uncertain.
Then the impossible happened, and I guess that’s where I got my motivation.
Juliet read Roses, was blown away by it, said so to me and we got into an email correspondence.
The NAS OK’d me to cross the world to California.
I did it, and met Miss Landau on Sunset Boulevard in March 2010. I always say that scene would knock spots off La La Land.
The NAS suggested I write a book about it, in order to inspire people with autism.
Against all odds, Dear Miss Landau was published in March 2012 to rave reviews.
Now here’s a critically important point:
Dear Miss Landau is a real-life autobiographical work involving a member of the cast and referencing Drusilla.
The copyright is mine.
Hence, Dear Miss Landau might (and, I stress, might) be the only Buffy-related product in the world able to circumvent Buffy’s teak-tough IP contracts and legally be filmed.
But what about a continuation of Buffy ~itself~? I hear you ask.
This is where it gets interesting, and even more surreal.
Remember Drusilla’s Roses, which blew Juliet Landau away and got us into an email correspondence?
I didn’t stop there. Drusilla’s Redemption came next, in which an ensouled Drusilla travelled to Africa to save Xander and a village of children from the source of the slayers’ power and a reincarnation of the first slayer, thereby redeeming herself.
Miss Landau had just written a two-part Dru story for IDW Publishing, and I was preparing (quite illegally) to combine this with the third story in the series, Drusilla Revenant, when something truly surreal and strangely simple happened…
I was taking a breather between Redemption and Revenant, watching a certain Buffy episode on DVD, and I saw something.
A lost, unfinished or discarded story arc from the original series. Something which should have happened but didn’t, partly because Spike unexpectedly became a breakout character.
I emailed Juliet (imagine how surreal that was!), and told her I’d spotted something.
Looking back, I think I was in the right place at the right time, looking at the right thing from exactly the right angle. I was in the right frame of mind and I had the right amount of knowledge about the right character.
It all came together, and I just saw it.
Buffy’s continuation. Plain as day.
And it was so simple. A child could see it, but nobody else ever has.
Once I got back from the States I romped through Revenant, combined it with Juliet’s story, developed the story arc and delivered the payoff in Avalon, Catalina, where Dru went in search of Xander…
But there was one more tale yet to be told.
I think I once heard James Marsters say that Spike and Dru’s two hundred year old love story had to be resolved, and I had a crack at it. In Spike & Dru : the Graveyard of Empires, I sent them to north Afghanistan in 2019 where, among other things, they sorted out their relationship.
At that point, I got the very strong impression that I’d done what Dru wanted: I’d built up her story, turned the Buffyverse upside down, tied fiction and reality together and brought it all to something approximating a happy ending.
As, perhaps, it was meant to be.
Dru was satisfied with that.
That was 2013.
Since then, I have mentioned this at the end of Dear Miss Landau, blogged about it in the Huffington Post UK, tried to alert members of the cast at comics-conventions (Amy Acker seemed particularly interested one time) and pitched or mentioned the possibility whenever I reasonably could.
No one’s ever really got it, and I am left feeling as if I am the only man in the world with access to the restored print of Lawrence of Arabia while everyone else has to make do with the mutilated 1971 TV version…
I really would like the fans to be able to read the whole story of Dear Miss Landau and the Dru Quartet, as it is actually meant to be. It works like this:
Dear Miss Landau and Drusilla’s Roses should be read together. This is where fiction and reality subtly intersected, and wackiness ensued.
Then simply read Drusilla’s Redemption, Drusilla Revenant and Spike & Dru : the Graveyard of Empires, in that order.
Please note that the Dru Quartet (what I call all four stories in their entirety) observes Buffy canon as much as possible. I would also firmly stress that all the stories were written to the same standard as Dear Miss Landau, and I’ve always actually considered Roses better than Landau.
Dear Miss Landau has been published and Roses and Redemption can be found in Archive of Our Own. I’m only holding Revenant and Graveyard back because they contain the resolution of the lost story arc and I would like the Dru Quartet legally to be published. I don’t want to add them to Archive of Our Own as I’m no fan of self-publishing, and I don’t want to just give away the secret of the lost story arc.
And at the moment, the Dru Quartet can only be classed as fan-fiction.
Hence the problem, and the need for a major fan campaign. There is precedent for this. Bjo Trimble and the Star Trek fans saved Star Trek for a third season in 1967-1968. More recently, money-mad football bosses wanted to create a European Super League. Not unlike Disney and Hollywood, they had money, power, contracts and lawyers on their side; but the football fans put their foot down as one and the idea was destroyed in eleven days flat.
You have the power if you will only focus and use it.
I know my limitations. Unlike Bjo Trimble, I am not an organiser or manager. However, I have created the content and have natural public speaking ability (rare for an Asperger). I am willing to do what I can.
But I am not writing this article to start yet another conversation. I am trying to tell you there is a chance, but you have to grasp it. Not have long arguments on social media about it.
Once I have posted this article, I will leave Reddit forever (sorry, I found you very nice) but I will post a copy of it on my Goodreads page, where I can be contacted. It’s up to you.
I would suggest the fans lobby for the Dru Quartet legally to be published, and for Dear Miss Landau to be turned into a film. There was even an attempt to turn Dear Miss Landau into a stage musical about ten years ago. It could be revived.
While I admit I’d mainly like to see the Dru Quartet legally published, I do wish there was some way it could be filmed. I can see it on an epic scale, but all four stories would depend heavily on nuanced portrayals by actors and time has gone by.
However, there may be a way: de-aging technology, AI, even plain old recasting…
As Mr Spock would say, there are always possibilities.
However, I think this is the best and only route out of the current situation, so I will add a few reviews here and hope to receive polite contact from a focused individual.
However, I know what can happen with social media… If I receive abuse, I will simply walk away from it all and the lost story arc’s resolution will never be revealed.
It’s up to you.
I hope there’s somebody out there.
James Christie.
~Dear Miss Landau~
“This is the best book I’ve read for ten years.”
(Tim Coates, former MD of Waterstones and WH Smith, on A Good Read, BBC Radio 4, July 2012)
“I read this constantly thinking ‘is this for real?’ An autistic Scottish man in his 40s has an obsession with a character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and writes a 250,000 word novel based on the character and ends up travelling to Hollywood and meeting the actress who plays her. You couldn’t make it up.”
(Chris Norton, Goodreads, October 2012)
~Drusilla’s Roses~
“I just finished your story. I thought it was great. I really enjoyed it. You managed to catch Drusilla’s voice and behaviour so beautifully. The sad, lost, haunted feeling of Dru was there.”
(Juliet Landau, August 2009)
“This is utterly beautiful and touching. As someone who’s written a Dru story where she gets her soul back, finds love and finds sanity, I have longed for such stories. This is the first one that came close to satisfying that longing. I love that she helped heal both Xander and Buffy - the two most wounded people after the fall of Sunnydale.”
(DeepBlueJoy, fan-fiction writer, May 2014)
~Drusilla’s Redemption~
“This is a beautifully written and disturbing novelette. I really do hope that the sequel will be available here soon. Since my own writing about Dru, I’ve never read anything else where I really felt more than just Dru’s craziness. Here I felt her heart and strength and saw her insight into the complexity of the human condition, including human evil in particular. Wonderfully done.”
(DeepBlueJoy, fan-fiction writer, May 2014)
"I cannot believe you break my heart by ending it there.
This is beautiful and fearsome and full of poetry. I'm in awe.
I just wanted them to grow old together. I wish you had given them that.
Peace.”
(DeepBlueJoy, fan-fiction writer, May 2014)
I tried to find DeepBlueJoy, tried to tell her I did it…
The story isn’t over.

My husband and I are planning on heading to CR for the first time later this year for our 10th anniversary. I have Celiacs and am planning on bringing a card with me stating such in Spanish (even though I am learning, I don't want to risk any misunderstanding), but I am wondering if anyone else has been there and is also gluten free. Where did you go that you would recommend? We are looking at San Jose, Jaco, Arena, and maybe a few other spots around the country. So no real restrictions on recommendations! Thanks in advance for anyone who can help!

I’ll go first.
[in Spanish] “Kristen got fucking fired bro!” high fiving
Edit to add that I’m doing my zillionth rewatch now specifically to find minor character quotes

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